


Follow Me Under.

by MarbleAide



Category: Actor RPF, Marvel Avengers Movies RPF, Thor (Movies) RPF
Genre: Emotions, Fluff, M/M, Romance, Swimming, Swimming Pools
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-06
Updated: 2013-07-06
Packaged: 2017-12-17 20:12:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/871504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarbleAide/pseuds/MarbleAide
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's late, and Tom is not where he should be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Follow Me Under.

It was a jolt—the feeling of falling, about to hit the ground before suddenly coming to beforehand—that woke him up. Blurry-eyed and still half asleep (though his heart was beating too quickly now to fall back asleep easily) Chris groaned, feeling around on the bed for a second, trying to remember why the fact that the other side was empty made a difference. His hand patted around, feeling the disheveled sheets, the pillow that still held part of an imprint, and why Chris felt like there needed to someone to hold for him to be comfortable.

Oh.

Chris sat up, more awake now than before as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, carding a hand through his hair to pull loose strands behind his ears. He looked down at the other half of the bed—touched, but now empty. Chris groaned again, throwing his legs off the bed and looked to the digital clock on the hotel nightstand. The little red lines came together in his vision to read ‘2:47’.

“Tom?” He called out, voice faint from the lack of use in the past few hours. He looked around the dark hotel room, waiting a second for his eyes to adjust to the dim lighting cast from the street lights beyond, only to find it empty except for his own presence. No one called back to him.

He tried again, this time his voice was a little louder. There was a second of panic, (just a second, because why would Tom simply leave?) which only lasted as long as it took to think everything through. Chris gave a soft sigh, forcing his frantically beating heart to still before he got up. Tom probably went back into his own room, no big deal.

He didn’t. Tom was nowhere to be seen back in his own room. His bed was still untouched, the light in the bathroom was off, and the worry was starting to rise once more in Chris’s throat.  He was about to call down to the front desk, see if anyone had seen him walk by or maybe Tom was just with one of the other cast members, that would be logical, no need to panic, no need—

Chris looked over at the chair beside the bedside table, pausing with the phone in his hand, fingers hovering over the buttons, to see Tom’s suitcase clearly having been riffled through. For a second, Chris was confused. Had Tom actually got up and dressed at this hour? And for what purpose?

Upon further inspection, Chris found none of Tom’s actually outfits missing. He even checked the closet to see that his suit and jacket were still hanging up, but nothing was out of place from where Tom had put them when they checked into the hotel the morning prior. Chris checked the suitcase a second time, just to be sure, and found that one article of clothing was apparently missing.

Tom’s bathing suit.

Chris cocked a brow at this, growing confused even further as he checked the bathroom to find one of the towels missing. He paused in the bathroom, waiting a spell for his sleep ridden mind to catch up. When it did, finally, he padded over to the window in silence, pulling back the curtains to look down at the pool area below. The blue waters were illuminated gently by the lights within it, casting a perfect silhouette of the only person currently swimming at three o’clock in the morning.

 _‘Ah,’_ Chris thought, smiling to himself as he watched the dark shape of the male backstroke from one end of the pool to the other. _‘There you are.’_

—-

No one else was awake on a Tuesday night (or rather, a Wednesday morning) to notice, or care, that Tom was swimming at three in the morning. He was being quiet, simply swimming back and forth. He had done a few laps, practiced his strokes here and there, before just floating above the water on his back, looking up at the dark night sky deep in thought.

The clerk near the front desk was the only one to glance sideways at him when he came down. He was the only other one in the lobby to see him slink out of the elevator, dressed in nothing but a bathing suit with a towel slung over his shoulder. He gave the clerk a small smile, shrugging as if that promised he wasn’t up to something strange. If he wasn’t supposed to go swimming this late at night, the clerk didn’t say anything as Tom passed by. Silently, Tom thanked him and went on his way.

He’d been in the water for almost an hour when he heard footsteps. They were faint and muddled by the water in his ears. At first, he thought it was a security officer come to kindly ask him to leave the pool and go back up to his room. When there came no stern words with the footfall or a flashlight swishing back and forth in his vision, Tom assumed he had guessed wrong.

Looking sideways towards the edge of the pool, he was surprised to find Chris staring right back at him, his arms crossed tightly across his chest. He was dressed in a loose pair of jeans, only zipped up, and a shirt Tom knew he had worn yesterday. Tom grinned up at the other, looking at him partially upside down as water splashed across his vision.

“I didn’t want to wake you.”  He said when he noticed Chris wasn’t going to start up the conversation. He turned in the water, going from floating on his back to simply treading water. He made no further movements to swim towards the edge near Chris. “You were snoring when I left.”

Chris made a face at this, something crossed between embarrassment and irritation. Tom was expecting the usual bitten remarked of ‘I don’t snore!’ from Chris, like he usual came back with whenever Tom mentioned his snoring. It wasn’t loud or obnoxious, but clearly it always seemed to hit a nerve. This time, however, Chris seemed to ignore the comment.

“Tom, it’s past three. Why are you out here?”

He shrugged, moving to continue his swim back and forth across the pool, slower this time as he felt Chris’s eyes following him. “Couldn’t sleep.” He said simply, turning on his back once more to look at the sky. There weren’t many stars out that night, too many lights shining in the city with the perfect touch of clouds to shift around and block any that attempted to shine through. “Jet-lag, I figure. Bit hard getting used to all the different time zones.”  He tilted his head up at Chris, water dripping into his eyes so he had to blink it away to see the Australian clearly. “You should probably be getting your own sleep.”

“I would, but it’s quite difficult when I know you’re not there with me.”

Tom would have smiled up at him, looked up at him with the pool lights making him glow softly, the reflection of the water flickering off his tall frame, but  Chris wasn’t amused. His tone of voice was too stern, something that Tom decided he didn’t like in the least. He turned again in the water, this time swimming over to the ledge of the pool where Chris stood. He put his arms up on the concrete, chin resting against his forearms as he stared up at Chris. He glared softly, trying to read the look in Chris’s eyes.

“You’re tired.” He pointed out.

“Yes, obviously.”

“And mad—“

“I’m not mad.” Chris objected, getting defensive. Tom could see it in the way his shoulders tensed up.

“Fine, you’re not mad. But you’re irritated.”

There came no reply. Tom was right and he huffed out a sigh because of it. There was a long silence, interrupted only by the water slashing against the sides of the pool, the sounds of the city a few yards off. It wasn’t until Tom noticed Chris’s eyes had fallen away from his own, landing somewhere left of his head, making it feel much more awkward then it needed to be. Tom smiled softly up at him.

“Come for a swim with me.”

“What?”

“You heard me, Chris.” Again, Tom shrugged, pushing off against the wall to paddle out into the middle of the pool. “It’s nice.”

“What part of three in the morning are you not getting?”

Tom didn’t answer. He just smiled back in a way that looked too soft. It wasn’t sincere, which was a strange thing to see on Tom’s face. It almost looked sad, if Chris looked hard enough, though the chance was never given to him as Tom took a breath and disappeared under the water. Chris watched from above as his shifting form sank lower and lower in the middle of the pool. Chris counted to ten and when he realized Tom wouldn’t be coming up any time soon, he sighed and began the process of getting rid of his clothing.

They were breaking one hotel policy or another, whether it be swimming past midnight or swimming in his underwear—because the hell if Chris was going to get caught skinny dipping right now. Tom was still sitting under the water when he eased in, colder then what he had expected it to be. There were two seconds of adjustment before he too took a deep breath and swam down to where Tom was sitting cross legged at the bottom of the pool looking up at the world above him.

Chris had to let out a bit of the air from his lung to be able to stay down without much effort, maneuvering so he was floating right in front of Tom. The Brit looked at Chris, smiling at him before pointing up, gesturing for him to do what he was doing. There was another few seconds of him arranging himself and letting out more air from his lungs before he could sit like Tom was and look up through the water to the surface.

The view kept shifting with the water, always unfocused and blurry; the lights from the pool gave everything a soft white glow, edged with blue. Chris could see the dark sky and the rising hotel at the edge of his vision. The shapes of the world through water took on a stain-glass effect that kept moving all around. Blinking, Chris breathed out and turned his head, looking across the few inches of space and water to Tom. His head was still turned up, his eyes unblinking as he looked onward. The lighting gave him a glow, the water made him look softer, smoother, and strands of hair floated about on the small current, waving in the water.

Though the view above was interesting to see, Chris couldn’t help but admit Tom looked better. All the sharp angles of his body, how his cheek bones cast shadows and his collarbone dipped, how his nose created the perfect angle and curved just right at the tip. His hair was torn between two colors, the darker brown at the ends and his natural blond at the roots which still looked good on him, somehow, in a way Chris knew no one could actually pull off.

His lungs were starting to protest the lack of air, but Chris ignored the burn in favor of moving forward, hand out reached to grip Tom by the back of the neck gentle, jerking him out of his long staring session up. Their movements were slowed down by the water, so everything felt like it was going in slow motion as Tom turned his head down to look at Chris and Chris leaned forward, bringing Tom closer to him until their lips met.

It was almost odd, kissing Tom and not feeling any wetness at all even with them under water. How languid and slow it all was. How he could watch Tom slowly close his eyes and lean into it, little bubbles rising out of his nose as he exhaled and kissed back, arms coming to wrap around Chris, holding him closer. This continued for another few seconds, just kissing each other with no need or desperation, just to feel the other pressing against them, feeling the heat of bodies against the cool pool water, but soon enough they needed air. Chris was becoming light headed and his chest heaved with the need to breathe in once more. Not wanting to let go of Tom, he simply grabbed the other’s legs and wrapped them around his waist, kicking up from the pool’s bottom as he held Tom close.

The single, swift movement propelled them far enough to break the surface of the pool where both males gasped for their first lungful of air in almost two minutes. Together they panted and gasped and took in breath after breath until, finally, Tom could manage talking. He still held Chris; arms around his shoulders as Chris tread water for them both.

“What was…what was that…for?” He asked between breathes, a smile clear and evident on his face.

And Chris couldn’t really give him a proper reply. There was no reason for him to kiss Tom, he simply felt compelled to do so. Watching him sit down there, looking so relaxed at the bottom of the pool looking up at the dark night sky and Chris didn’t know exactly what he saw, why he got such a distant look in his eyes, but it looked right. Beautiful, with the retreating edge of sadness that seemed to drip from Tom tonight and Chris just—

“You looked beautiful. I felt…I wanted to.” Chris stumbled over his words, looking back at Tom as water dripped into his eyes. “I had to.”

Even though the answer was vague, it seemed like the one Tom wanted to hear as he smiled once more, this time without that hint of sadness. Everything suddenly felt better with Tom, like a veil had been lifted. He moved in to capture Chris’s lips on his own, everything much faster and hot without the water keeping them apart. He let Tom have control, opening his mouth when he nipped at his lip, letting him explore and suck until the need to breathe once more grew too great. They parted, foreheads still pressed together as their breath mingled.

“Tom?” Chris whispered, because right now it felt like the only volume that was appropriate.

“Yeah?” Tom whispered back, a little quirk to his lips as he looked Chris in the eyes.

“We need to get out the pool and go back to our room.”

Tom laughed, burying the sound into Chris’s shoulder as he clung to him. “Yeah, alright.” He replied, turning his head so he could whisper into Chris’s ear. “But only if you swim us out of here.”

“Deal, you lazy ass.”

So, he did.


End file.
